Bingeing Barbarians

Well now I've done it. I drank an espresso drink eight hours ago, so I am filled with insomnia and confined to the parts of my mom's house called Middle Earth because Hannah and Josh are sleeping like normal people. Every once in a while I venture into the Dark Parts of the house to look for an eraser or my hot pink lipstick, but after knocking over a glass of water and tripping over a power cord (both events causing wakeful fits of profanity) I decided to not be THEE shittiest person in the world and jail myself to my (my mom's) bedroom.

I feel like I've been spinning perpetually in a constant state of half-dreams for the last week. I left Encinitas Monday morning, tried to familiarize myself with the concept of being jobless and homeless in San Luis for a couple of days, then hopped on a train to Santa Barbara early Thursday morning to work four days at my old restaurant in Santa Barbara, only to return today in such a haze that I'm currently defying gravity.

Oh, Santa Barbara.

Now that I've actually lived somewhere else as an adult, I am finally able to see that the liver-blackening antics of this paradise-town are not in fact "standard" for communities in general. I know it all stems from the UCSB campus being a mere twenty minutes away. In Isla Vista we all brush our teeth with Peppermint Schnapps and stagger to a breakfast of Bloody Mary's and mimosas to chase away our hangovers from the previous night's keg stands and beer pong tournaments. When we turn twenty-one, we don our "nice" drinking clothes and smoking jackets and cram into overcrowded cab vans and carpool to the bars and clubs that light up State Street after dark. We don't mature from the vomiting, fist-fighting buffoons that litter the beachy streets of I.V.-- nay, we merely take our shit-storms to the clean sidewalks downtown and pay hundreds of dollars to give our debauchery some nice scenery. We Pre-Party at home to save money on liquor so that we can afford $15 nachos from Freebirds at three in the morning. Then we wake up with salsa in the corners of our mouths, brush our teeth with Peppermint Schnapps, and start the cycle yet again.

When I moved to Encinitas I had the idea in my head that I wanted to get healthy-- you know, really explore the benefits of a vegan diet, lose a few pounds, quit smoking, and lay off the empty calories I was used to beer-bonging into my ever-extending belly. And I did, kinda. In the beginning of my stay there I was really good, actually. Mostly because I hadn't made any drinking buddies yet except for my six-foot brother-in-law, and he can hold his liquor like a Sumo wrestler. Somehow it's just not the same when you're the only one saying wanna-be-profound shit after three shots of tequila. When I moved into my own place, I started baby-stepping my way back into my old drinking routine. The one where I casually open a bottle of wine while writing my first blog or dancing to Shakira by myself in my living room. And then before I knew it, I was having three beers every night after work or polishing off a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon in a matter of two hours and still acting like it was perfectly acceptable behavior. (Because I enjoy my own company so much and in fact have full-on conversations with myself and my mouth, I forget that most people view drinking alone as a sign of depression or steadfast alcoholism.) It wasn't until I started making friends and actually drinking with peers in public that I started to view my drinking habit in a different light. In Santa Barbara, when we all get together at night, the unspoken agreement is that everyone is going to get shit-faced. You can invite someone over to watch The Biggest Loser, and you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he will show up with a 30-pack of Natty Light. If your friend invites you over for Craft Night, you automatically go to the store to grab three bottles of champagne for the occasion. That's just how we do it.

In Encinitas, however, I noticed that something strange was happening. When my new friends invited me over for bonfires and music, I would show up with two jumbo-sized wine boxes (naturally) and would already have a pint-sized glass filled for myself before I'd even sit down. I would chug and offer the wine, chug and offer, and then somewhere around the last eighth of the second box I'd realize that no one else had touched a drop. Everyone was... bonfiring... and musicking.... What. The. Fuck. Suddenly I became the only one shouting curse words and passing out mid-sentence with my chin on my chest, while everyone else remembered every semi-retarded half-thought I'd slurred laughingly into a blurring room. It took me way too long to realize that what I considered Normal Behavior was actually just Santa Barbaric. It took me quite some time to adjust to this more controlled, more sincere form of interacting with others. Not that everyone didn't have the most fun ever, because actually everyone I met was hilarious, intelligent, and talented, and I always felt my heart exploding with happiness and joy at being included in their gatherings. No... it was just different.... Different because everyone REMEMBERS their interactions and drinking is just a way to relax a little and laugh a little more uninhibitedly. I ended up sticking like glue to the one person I met who could drink like I could and she quickly became my partner in crime. I knew we were soulmates the first time we hung out, just the two of us, under the guise of doing some art and maybe writing a little. We went to VONS to get "a snack" and both matched each other's steps straight to the liquor aisle. We each reached for a bottle of the cheapest sparkling wine... and then without speaking, we locked eyes and both reached together for that third "just in case" bottle whose necessity is understood only by a true Boozer. From that moment on, we knew we spoke the same language. There's a certain code exchanged among heavy drinkers. When we plan to "grab a beer after work," it goes without saying that we're going to take $3 shots of Jack 'til the bar closes and we're the last ones left, smoking cigarettes with the bouncers in the employees-only back room and helping the bartenders wipe up the empty bar. "Let's just stay in and have a mellow night" means we're going to drink copious amounts of wine and share deeply personal secrets and try to figure out the meaning of life while knocking over glasses and staining our shirts with purple splotches. My personal favorite is, "Oh I didn't accomplish a lot today," because that clearly means that we were too hungover to do anything but maybe venture out to get a greasy burrito and watch abc.com shows 'til early evening rolls around and it's time to drag our aching livers into hippie pants and go to work. Much of my last two months in Encinitas was spent in this way, and right before I left for San Luis I could feel the fingertips of Santa Barbara's (singlewhitefemale) begin to warm, like her dusty corpse was beginning to revive itself with each drop of Hefeweizen coursing through her stagnant veins.

It seems, though, that over the course of the last nine months, even I had forgotten the potency of the party scene in my native land. As I mentioned before, I went to Santa Barbara for the last four days to pocket some money and visit my favorite people still there. My brother and his girlfriend also went to visit, and we had a royal reunion with all the remaining members of our crew from the past seven years. All I can really say is... well...



FUCK.


I can't BELIEVE how much people drink there. I was comPLETEly unprepared for it. My liver is still giving me the finger, and I didn't even TRY to hang with the locals after the first day. I've always been the biggest drinker around. I'm always the instigator, buying people shots just because I can't bear the sight of an empty glass in the hands of someone next to me. But this last weekend proved to me that I had completely forgotten the kind of heavy drinking that I used to be a part of. Jesus Christ, those people are fucking NUTS. My first night there we all went out with complete confidence that we could hang just like the old days. My brother ended up having to apologize for purposely spitting an entire beer onto our friend's brand-new leather shoes (he still has no idea why he would have done this) and I almost got kicked out of a late night eatery for public debauchery because they had NOTHING VEGAN and I was spinning so badly I was knocking into the hostess while berating her establishment for putting egg in  every single goddamn item on their menu. The next day, we all lay in a row on our friend Allison's floor like Charlie's elderly grandparents in Willy Wonka, moving only to half-raise our arms when passing around the camera that documented all the previous night's sins. The second night only half of us could even make it out of the house, and I couldn't force myself to drink more than a single Stella. While looking for our friend who was supposedly vomiting in a parking lot somewhere, I stumbled upon the oddest scene I have seen since... well I guess since I left Santa Barbara. It was like something out of a zombie movie. Drunk bodies were scattering across the parking lot with jerky movements. Straight ahead, a girl pissed herself standing in direct streetlamp-light, the image of her vagina free to bore itself into the retinas of any still-living person's eyes. I was one of those lucky people. To her right, a lifeless body sat staring at her in a wheelchair, close enough to be sprayed by the urine reflecting off the cement wall behind her. To my right was another lifeless body in a wheelchair, this one surrounded by gangsters in basketball jerseys smoking illegal substances and rubbing their crotches on half-naked lady legs in heels who slurred in response, their zombie-rotted tongues inhibiting their speech. And then to my left... mute forms with full bladders climbing recklessly up the walls of a port-a-potty, snarling at its occupant to come out either to free the toilet up or so they could rip out his intestines for an after-drink snack (at this point, who knows?). I should hardly mention that by the time I found my friend, it was only to see that our other friend was shaking her boobs like a pair of maracas and that the smile she gave him was through eyes deadened by five shots of tequila and that last tall Guinness I'd left her drinking at the bar. After pacing like an enraged caged feline for a few moments to shake out the creeps that had been rattling up and down my spine, I reassessed the horror film around me and realized that, actually, this was completely normal for a Saturday night in Santa Barbara, and the thing that was wrong was ME. I could no longer maintain the level of debauchery necessary to blend in to the lifestyle of my past.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with my affection for booze. I mean, it's been such a close acquaintance of mine for so long now that it is literally ingrained into my muscle memory to reach for a glass of wine while cooking, a beer after work, and a shot when something exciting happens (or not). Every time I "quit" drinking I'm just mimicking The Boy Who Cried "Wolf," and I know no one believes it at this point, especially me. But maybe things will just happen naturally as I slowly change my lifestyle accidentally? I mean, we all know my motto is WHATEVER HAPPENS HAPPENS, so I guess I should actually lean into that and not try to figure everything out as much as I do. Here in SLO, I haven't had a drink. Granted I've only been here like four days total, but for me that's pretty monumental. There's something about being surrounded by my mom's energy that makes me not want to drink. Like, if I'm hungover I'll let her down. But more than anything, I think I know the worst/best of my drinking days are over. I'm not going to pretend anymore that I don't have a huge crush on refreshing alcoholic beverages, but I think it was an eye-opening experience to be smack-dab in the middle of my former environment and realize that I no longer fit in it like I used to.

Don't get me wrong-- I fucking love Santa Barbara. And I had the most fun in the last four days that I can ever remember having. I know this because I laughed so much that my lack-of-abs are still sore. I'm actually going back to work a few more shifts this weekend, and I can't WAIT to see everyone's faces again. But I guess I should pay attention to the zombie-fearing part of me that doesn't want to lose my grip on reality so readily in the name of fun. Plus, I mean, zombies aren't vegan, so....

Or maybe I should just start training secretly in my mom's bedroom when everyone is sleeping. I'll see how many shots I can down in a five-minute time-frame before the room starts spinning and I spit up kale all over my mom's favorite floral bedspread. Yeah, I should probably just do that. Santa Barbara here I come!!!!